A common problem in public safety access points, such as E911 call centers, Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs), and similar types of call centers, is the spikes in resource demands. Specifically, when a large emergency event occurs, there are often multiple simultaneous calls entering the E911 call center at once. Problematically, the E911 call center usually only has a limited number of trained staff on hand at any given time. The reason why more resources are not made available is due to the burden of having more resources and except for large emergency event, most of the resources would be idle or underutilized. Staffing an E911 call center for a worst case scenario is not economically efficient nor is it common practice.
Practically speaking, when an E911 call center experiences a sudden influx of calls, the system tries to prioritize which of the calls will make it to an agent first (e.g., call triage). Utilization of audio information alone can make call prioritization very difficult. It would be advantageous to use information other than audio content or traditional first-in-first-out (FIFO) prioritization rules to help manage multiple calls in an E911 call center.